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" Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed - by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed. "

Carl Sagan

Wish

Today

" Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. "

" All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value. "

" Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out. "

" You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000! "

" I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions. "

" The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that? "

" Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. "

Carl Sagan

Will

Never

" The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. "

" The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous. "

" Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. "

" We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.' "

" If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? "

" We are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. "

" We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. "

" We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. "

" The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before. "

" Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. "

" For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. "

" Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception. "

" In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. "

Carl Sagan

Will

Save

" We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save. "

" A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. "

" Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. "

" Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. "

Carl Sagan

Evidence

Absence

" Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that. "

" I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star. "

" There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. "

" Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust - or less than dust - in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. "

" For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. "